Violation is in eye of beholder

Early this year, before the spring leaves began to bloom, the Village of Lake Zurich planted a traffic camera at South Rand Road and Illinois Highway 22, and it began snapping away at a parade of red-light runners.

But by Aug. 1, when Kevin Mahanay's Lexus sedan made a right turn at that corner without stopping, things weren't all that clear from the camera's angle; a scrawny tree had sprouted enough greenery to obscure the camera's view of some of the traffic light.Yet the device flagged Mahanay for a $100 ticket.

What happened next is most unusual when it comes to tickets generated through red-light cameras, which are hard to dispute because police have pictures. Mahanay not only protested but prevailed, arguing that he proceeded on a green arrow that the camera simply couldn't see.

Still unclear is how long the limb had been doing cameo appearances in the red-light camera's snapshots, why the northwest suburban village took weeks to trim the tree after it showed up in the video of Mahanay's car, and how many similar tickets were issued -- and paid without question -- over that span.

Municipalities' use of red-light cameras has become controversial for a variety of reasons, not least of which are questions about whether the cameras' use is more about raising revenue than promoting traffic safety. But one of the selling points is that they can nab far more traffic violators than a cop in a patrol car while also recording visual evidence of infractions.

That point was put to the test when Mahanay, a retired business consultant from Lake Barrington, headed to a Lake Zurich Home Depot one Saturday morning and made his turn onto Rand. The enforcement camera appeared to show the Lexus' driver ignoring a red light and plowing into the turn at 24 mph.

Red-light camera tickets typically arrive in the mail along with an Internet link offering drivers a view of the video and still photos taken of their car. Mahanay took a look, then complained to police that he wasn't required to stop on red because the traffic signal was simultaneously displaying a green turn arrow.

The camera couldn't see it, he argued, because part of the shot was blocked by a leafy branch from the young tree on the parkway along Main Street, as Highway 22 is known in Lake Zurich.

Not all incidents marked by cameras result in tickets, and the final say-so resides with local police.

"Not only did an officer approve [the ticket], but I reviewed it and I thought I could see the violation and I had the chief review it and he thought it was clearly a violation," Lake Zurich Deputy Police Chief Terry Vandergrift told the Tribune.

Mahanay chose to contest the ticket before a hearing officer, a right that a fraction of camera-ticket recipients exercise because few tickets are overturned and losers pay court costs in addition to fines. Mahanay said he pressed on out of principle, not because of the money.

"I just thought this was a mean thing for them to do," he explained later.

The hearing took place late last month in the basement of Lake Zurich Village Hall.

David Eterno, a Palatine attorney hired by Lake Zurich to preside over such hearings, watched the video as it was projected on a wide screen. He squinted hard as he took a second look on a smaller computer monitor. Then he asked for lights in the room to be dimmed to take yet a third look on the widescreen.

"I don't see a yellow arrow but I do see some sort of yellow," Eterno finally proclaimed. "This could be clearer."

And with that, he dismissed Mahanay's ticket. The same day, Eterno also dismissed tickets sent to five other motorists who had showed up and argued that they were wrongly ticketed because of the tree branch.

One of them was Linda Kroll, a retiree from Barrington. "How many hundreds of dollars did they get from people who didn't have the time to come down here?" she asked afterward.

Vandergrift said the camera led to the issuance of 3,191 red light tickets since it went on line in the spring, with slightly more than one-third involving right-turn violations. In Illinois, all red-light tickets result in $100 fines.

It's not known when the tree first began hogging the camera's view, but Vandergrift said police ordered the camera-obstructing limbs lopped off as soon as they noticed the problem -- in late August or early September.

That's nearly a month -- or more -- after Mahanay's ticket.

As for Mahanay, he drove home from the hearing and quickly fired off an e-mail to Lake Zurich Village President Suzanne Branding. In it, he vowed to spend his shopping dollars elsewhere from now on.